


send you out of my memory

by thefullergirl



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Exes, Kissing, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:34:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26985250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefullergirl/pseuds/thefullergirl
Summary: He knows way too fucking much for someone that broke up with Donghyuck a whole 5 months ago.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Na Jaemin
Comments: 18
Kudos: 79





	send you out of my memory

**Author's Note:**

> i just looped "faded in my last song" and now i'm emo so here's this
> 
> title from eng trans of the song!

As always, Donghyuck leaves the bed. It doesn’t matter if Jaemin reaches out and uses his poutiest tone with him, Donghyuck will leave, slipping through his fingers like he does.

Tonight, Donghyuck deigns to pick up Jaemin’s discarded shirt from the floor, slipping his arms through the sleeves and thumbing a button to close it. There’s nothing Jaemin can do but watch him pad across the bedroom floor, not to pick up his own mess of clothes, but rather just to get Jaemin to look.

And look, he does. Donghyuck is all long legs and sun-kissed freckles, navigating Jaemin’s bedroom because he knows exactly where Jaemin hides all his secrets. He’ll never upturn them, no, he just wants to run his graceful fingers across them, as if to mark that he is fully aware of them. Knowledge to be tucked into his mind and maybe brought out later. Maybe.

Jaemin pulls himself up into a sitting position, not bothering to get anything to make himself more decent. They both know too much about each other anyway, why put anything up?

“Tonight or in the morning?” he asks, because that’s bound to be brought up sooner or later anyways. Both options are viable, but it’s really not his decision to make.

Back turned to him, Donghyuck plucks one of his sketchbooks from the shelves. When he moves to sit down in the armchair at the corner, a corner of his mouth is tilted up. “You really shouldn’t shoo me away when you’re the one that called.”

He bites down on his cheek. “That wasn’t shooing you away.”

Donghyuck chuckles airily as he carefully opens the sketchbook. He examines the first page for a few beats before answering. 

“Mmm, yeah. I know exactly how you’d get me to go.”

With a sigh, Jaemin looks down at his hands. He has ink smudges over his knuckles and the sides of his hands, something he forgot to wash off the moment that Donghyuck arrived. He knows he really should wash up now.

If he were to be honest, maybe Donghyuck leaving tonight would be best. Doesn’t matter if he has already panic-bought the ingredients for his favorite breakfast (scallion pancakes). Doesn’t matter if he already put a pillowcase on an extra pillow for him. Doesn’t matter if Jaemin is already considering walking over to where he’s sitting and run his hands over his exposed  _ everything. _

It really would be best if Donghyuck leaves now.

“Do you still draw me?” Donghyuck asks, not even looking up. He’s intently studying that sketch of Jaemin’s view from his office window.

There’s a tiny prickle by Jaemin’s ribs. “I try not to.”

“So you do.” Donghyuck’s small smile spreads, and it’s simply unfair how he looks right now. Glowing, because he’s just fucked Jaemin within an inch of his life and now he’s equipped with the knowledge that Jaemin still draws him. Fucking great.

He resists crossing his arms around himself, instead opting to run his fingers over the mussed up cotton sheets. “Does that matter?”

_ Does that matter to you? I thought it wouldn’t. _

He bites back that one.

Instead of answering, Donghyuck just flips the page. Jaemin knows all too well what’s on that page, so he returns to looking down at his hands.

There’s a little hum from across the room, and Jaemin does his absolute best to push down any flush that threatens to rise in his cheeks. He hopes that it’s dark enough that Donghyuck won’t notice, but he’s too perceptive for his own good.

“You do,” Donghyuck says, soft. 

On that page is a quick study of Donghyuck, just his collarbones and jaw really, the gorgeous line of his neck and all his moles.That one was done on one of those days where Jaemin just couldn’t handle not doing it, done almost completely from memory. It would look like any other study to anyone else, but it would be unmistakable to him.

After all, Jaemin always drew him softer than anything else.

“You never draw my face,” he muses out loud. Jaemin keeps hoping that he just turn the damn page already, but he can’t hear him doing it. “I’ve always wondered why.”

Jaemin fists the sheets in one hand, letting go after a breath.  _ I can’t...can’t quite capture your smile. It never looks right, so I have to keep looking at a photo of you.  _

_ And that was never a good thing to do. _

“I just don’t.” He shrugs, chances a glance at him. Donghyuck has his head tilted at him now, eyes blinking slowly. 

With a shrug of his own, Donghyuck goes back to looking at the sketchbook. He finally turns the page, and Jaemin lets out a breath he doesn’t know he was holding.

“Drawn anyone else?”

Donghyuck is now gently toying with the spiral spine of the sketchpad, running his finger up and down. Jaemin isn’t sure what he’s looking at now, but he’s sure that sketchbook doesn’t have another human in it.

“Yeah.” Jaemin turns over his hands, stares at the ink stains. Donghyuck had kissed them earlier. “Been practicing hands and expressions when I can.”

Just as carefully as he opened it, Donghyuck closes the sketchbook, sets it down on the little side table by the chair. He leans back in the chair, regarding Jaemin with an expression that Jaemin would never fully be able to decipher.

“Why?”

Jaemin furrows his brows. “I...I’ve been seeing all these great hand studies and I want to get to that level and I -”

“No, Nana,” Donghyuck interrupts, shaking his head slightly. Jaemin pretends that he doesn’t feel his entire system flip at the nickname. “Why? Why...still this?”

Truth is, Jaemin thought he had an answer for this. He’d practiced it a few times, because this line of questioning was going to happen someday. He thought that he could say something that would shut Donghyuck up about this whole thing, and they’d just go on like they have been doing. Something accompanied with a nonchalant shrug, like it doesn’t quite matter if this ends or not. 

The even bigger truth is, Jaemin just misses him. All the selfish parts of him that he’s pushed away, all of them just miss him. Miss Donghyuck’s lilting laugh, that smile that makes his eyes crinkle, the way it just fills every empty space Jaemin has tried to fill with other things. Miss the way that Donghyuck always kisses him sweetly, even when he’s infuriating, even when he’s being stubbornly quiet, even when Donghyuck actually wants to strangle him. Miss the way that Donghyuck wriggles into his space because he’s always too cold, and Jaemin wonders how the sun can get cold like that to find warmth in Jaemin’s bony embrace.

And Jaemin still knows his favorite breakfast, still knows that song he keeps singing to himself whenever he’s trying to focus. He still knows that Donghyuck prefers his pillows fluffy and his side of the bed cool to the touch. He still knows that Donghyuck will inevitably pluck his coffee cup from his hands in the morning and drink it for him. He still knows the feeling of Donghyuck’s goodbye smooch, something that never really changed all this time.

He knows way too fucking much for someone that broke up with Donghyuck a whole 5 months ago.

“Why do you keep coming, then?” he counters, but he knows that it’s weak. He’d just rather not let Donghyuck have the knowledge of him still buying his brand of detergent all these months after.

Also, he does want to know why. It’s not like he forces Donghyuck to come here. It’s not like they ended things on “good terms” like everyone says they do. Jaemin knows it’s not like that for them.

Donghyuck’s mouth quirks up. “Ah, Jaemin, always avoiding the questions.”

Jaemin does his best to forget what it was like to have Donghyuck kissing his tired hands. “You do too.”

“That’s true.”

In the next moment, Donghyuck gets up, making his way to the bed. Jaemin suddenly has a lapful of him, Donghyuck’s fingers carding through his hair. By habit, Jaemin squeezes his hips, and it makes something in him constrict further.

Eyes wide and dark and all-knowing, Donghyuck whispers, “Nobody knows, y’know? Not Jeno, or Renjun, or Mark. Or anyone.”

He knows. Jaemin never told anyone either. In the mornings, he’d just much rather forget that things happened, because that was overall better for him.

Remembering? Remembering this voice that can lull him to calm and make him want to tear at himself at the same time, remembering that with every tease Donghyuck has, he’ll always be gentle with him after, remembering that this Donghyuck makes him smile despite himself? Remembering was the worst he could do.

“We tell them a lot of lies, don’t we?” Donghyuck croons, and his weight is settling onto Jaemin. Familiar, like he always is. “And they believe all of them.”

Jaemin slips his hands up, caressing his sides. “We lie to ourselves too. I think that’s what makes it believable.”

The smile on Donghyuck’s face spreads. “We do. Maybe if we do it enough, it’ll actually be true.”

He leans down to fit his mouth against Jaemin’s, as sweet as ever. Like there’s no rush, because they can’t be caught here. Like he just wants to savor this, whatever this is. 

Like...like he misses Jaemin too.

Jaemin kisses him back, pushes everything to the back of his mind. All he knows is the feverish warmth of Donghyuck under his fingertips and the hands pulling him closer. That’s all he’ll allow himself to know right now.

He flips them over and Donghyuck is giggling, barely silenced with Jaemin dipping down to kiss him again. He loops his arms around Jaemin’s neck like he loves him, and Jaemin does not think about that.

“Let’s forget, yeah?” he whispers against Jaemin’s lips. Jaemin isn’t sure either of them are properly breathing right now, like everything that they are will collapse soon. “In the morning, you can shoo me away however you want.”

Jaemin nods, even though his mind is warring with the idea. He doesn’t want this, doesn’t want to have him and then ask him to leave.

But then again, Jaemin doesn’t really have him. This will never be that. So, he just tastes Donghyuck’s ever-present sweetness and lets himself get lost in it. He’ll forget this, all of it, for the sake of himself. 

He always does.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah this hurts me too
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/bundoie) | [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/bundoie)


End file.
